Mine of ar-Radrad

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Ar-Raḍrāḍ mine (Yemen)
Ar-Raḍrāḍ mine
Ar-Raḍrāḍ mine
The mine of ar-Raḍrāḍ in what is now Yemen

The mine of ar-Raḍrāḍ ( Arabic منجم الرضراض, DMG Manǧam ar-Raḍrāḍ ; the trove of al-Yaman ) is a historic silver mine , about 50 km north-east of Sanaa , in Wādī Harib-Nihm , near the present village of al-Dschabali in the district Nihm (direction fork in the road for Ma'rib and Baraqish ) in Yemen operated that gives the mining area its current name. The excavation site is in today's Sanaa governorate , tectonically in the transition zone from the highland basin to the eastern mountain slope. From today's perspective, Ar-Raḍrāḍ is the largest known silver mine on the Arabian Peninsula .

history

The dating of the mine operation cannot be reliably done to this day. It is believed that mining took place mainly from the 6th to the 9th century AD. In laboratories in Orléans it was possible to determine the absolute time of charcoal material from the bottom of one of the overburden mounds that overburden occurred at least at the end of the pre-Islamic period around ± 613 to 670 AD. For this purpose, the 14 C dating developed by Willard Libby was used .

A tradition of the 10th century Yemeni scholar al-Hamdānī , who wrote that mining began in pre-Islamic times in ar-Raḍrāḍ and ceased shortly after AD 883, agrees with this finding . Al-Hamdānī calls this exact end date because at that time all Persian miners ( called mine Persians by the locals ) were killed or fled in an uprising against the local sheikh, but they alone had the monopoly over metal mining in the entire Arab region. According to his remarks, al-Hamdānī was able to question eyewitnesses about this.

From 570 to 627 Yemen, at the request of Himyar to liberate its original sphere of influence from the imposed yoke of Aksum , unceremoniously fell under the rule of the Sassanids , who degraded Himyar to a province of the Persian Empire. This in turn suggests that the Persians began mining silver in the mine earlier than around 613. In fact, they maintained the most important mines of the time at that time. They were mainly in the Iranian province of Khorasan and in the Saudi Arabian Najd . Paul Yule describes in his remarks on the history of Himyar that the Sassanid influence was not limited to the cities of the empire (Himyar), but also applied to the silver mine in ar-Raḍrāḍ in order to control the economically attractive tax system there.

Al-Hamdānī stated: "The mine of al-Yaman, that is, the mine of ar-Raḍrā liegt, lies on the border of the Nihm and the district of Yām of the land of the Hamdān. And it has been in ruins since 270 (corresponds to A.D. 883) . Chr.) ... " . After the geologists had also analyzed a tunnel dwelling, the question arose whether the use of the overburden sites was taken up again. Using the 14 C method, the material could be dated to the period between 1052 and 1069. However, there are no reliable findings on this and are subject to objective hindrances, such as the exhaustion of the aboveground mineral deposits or the lack of firewood to operate the smelting furnaces.

The mine, which had been completely forgotten and of which modern consciousness no longer even presented the name, was "rediscovered" in the early winter of 1980 on the occasion of a targeted archaeological investigation. The French had financed the action because the reference made by al-Hamdānī was very important and it was assumed that an old mine regularly indicates important deposits.

see also article section: Architectural history of South Arabia

capacities

Finds of mineral resources in Yemen were rare. In the area around Sa'da , free-standing iron could be found, at Taizz it was copper springs , associated with nickel deposits . More copper veins were found in the south-east of the country.

Zinc , lead and silver were found in ar-Raḍrāḍ . The heaps contained 24% zinc, 3.5% lead and 0.016% silver. Approximately 23%, 6.5% and 0.004% were bound in the slags. In ancient times, zinc could not be separated. The mining was also aimed exclusively at silver. In peak weeks, up to 60 kg of silver are said to have been produced, which would correspond to an annual production of 3 tons if the same result was achieved. A manuscript claims: "They mined a camel load of silver in a week, i.e. 20,000 dirhams ..." And: "The silver miners say: There is no mine in wieurâsân or anywhere else like that of al-Yaman ..." A large village was laid out around the pit, there was water and palm trees, everything necessary came from Basra in Iraq . The remains of ancient mining and smelting processes could easily be identified on the north side of the Jebel Salab until 2004, before modern commercial mining destroyed it. Slag fields were located within a radius of up to 5 km.

Depending on the occurrence, it was mined in different ways. Sometimes the soil was simply scraped away, sometimes smaller quarries were created, and around 30 tunnels more than 10 meters long were found. In the southern mining area, a tunnel 150 meters long, more than 30 meters wide and several meters high, was created, which has now collapsed. A large number of overburden and ventilation shafts were cut through the rock. Some tools, such as woven baskets, leather sacks, ceramic vessels and torches were found on site, but tools were not found, despite hundreds of pimple scars in the rock. However, iron was too precious to simply leave tools lying around.

literature

  • Christian Robin: The mine of ar-Raḍrāḍ: Al-Hamdānī and the silver of Yemen. In: Werner Daum: Yemen. Umschau-Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1991, ISBN 3-7016-2251-5 , pp. 129-131.
  • “Description of the Arabian Peninsula” ( Ṣifat Ǧazīrat al-ʿArab ). The work was edited by David Heinrich Müller under the title "Al-Hamdânî's Geography of the Arabian Peninsula" at Brill in Leiden. Volume I (1884) .
  • Horst Kopp (Editor): Regional Geography Yemen , Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag Wiesbaden, 2005, ISBN 3-89500-500-2 .
  • Paul Yule : Himyar. Late Antique in Yemen / Late Antique Yemen. Linden Soft Verlag, Aichwald 2007, ISBN 978-3-929290-35-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. on this Patrice Christmann, Phillippe Lagny, Jean-Luc Lescuyer, Ahmad Sharaf ad Din, Résultats des trois années de prospection en République arabe du Yémen; Déecouverte du gisement de Jabali (Zn-Pb-Ag) dans la couverture jurassique, in: Chronique de la Recherche minière , No. 473: 25-38 (1983)
  2. ↑ a b c Paul Yule, Himyar – Spätantike im Yemen / Late Antique Yemen , p. 53 (see lit.)
  3. ↑ Silver Paths Between Orient and Occident
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Christian Robin: The mine of ar-Raḍrāḍ: Al-Hamdānī and the silver of Yemen. In: Werner Daum: Yemen. Umschau-Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1991, ISBN 3-7016-2251-5 , pp. 129-131.
  5. ↑ The History of Silver - Silver of Medieval Islam (560 - 1125)
  6. ↑ a b Christopher Toll, (editor) and translator of the work of Al-Hamdānī: Kitāb al-Ǧauharatain al-ʿatīqatain al-māʾiʿatain as-safrāʾ wa-l-baiḍāʾ / The two precious metals gold and silver, Uppsala, 1968 (quotation translation) Internet resource, computer file
  7. ↑ Remote Sensing Study of the Ancient Jabali Silver Mines (Yemen): From Past to Present

Coordinates: 15 ° 32 ′ 45 ″  N , 44 ° 39 ′ 25 ″  E